After the bender of a pass from the Salt Plains we wind our way down to Pumamarca, originally an Inca settlement built at the foot of the striking 'Mountain of Seven Colours'. At a quaint market I buy a few alpaca scarves and steal a few sneaky photos. Sandra buys most of the market and we grab a llama steak for brunch. Surprisingly enough it doesn't taste of chicken! More porky beefy, with a hint of tuna steak. Not much to write home about, but evidently enough to blog.
Some emergency pollo empenadas in a bag and we're back on't road heading up the famous Quebrada de Humahuaka, a world heritage site. We're on route to a colonial town and a pre-Columbian (well old) indigenous fort, both real close to tut t'Bolivian Border.
The reconstructed fort on a hill is my first taste of the South American ancients stonemasonry. They knew what they were doing then. A fascinating windy stone town surrounding a temple with amazing valley views and comedy phallic cacti. It's ace seeing the way these pre-Inca guys built clever cities while we were busy throwing spears at each other.
Back on the road in the heading North to Humahuaka, we crossed the Tropic of Capricorn and passed a fair few dogs by the roadside. The dogs here have an over zealous penchant for car chasing. In fact the dogs in South America have a funny life. Domesticated by man, but left as unspayed strays to jump anything they want they have bred like rabbits. Some towns have more dogs than peeps, in a full spectrum of emanciation. They seem to be largely ignored by the populace, are don't seem quite sure what to do with their new found wild urban status. They skip about in packs merrily looking for piss to sniff, weedy dogs to bully and bitches to do, generally in front of a large crowd on a bus station forecourt.
Humahuaka: good name, average place. Another pretty colonial one-story town with various ornate churches, markets selling silly hats and shops packed with overpriced Bolivian-made ponchos, guanaco socks and the usual tourbus fodder. After a coffee and a silly hat purchase we head back down the Quebrada de Humuaka towards Salta, through fantastic colourful cacti valleys as the sun softly set.
6pm, heading through Jujuy, the next big town north of Salta, and out the other side. On a busy motorway junction we pass a marvellous sign saying 'Salta Left, Salta Straight on'. Arbitrarily we hike a left and several km later realise we chose poorly. Back we go and navigate the least straightforward junction to finally end up on the direct road to Salta. Or so it looked on our map. A nice short straight red line, Jujuy to Salta.
High up in the jungle canopy on a painfully slow narrow switchback road hugging a mountain that wasn't on our map. Damn the free car rental mappage. Possibly the meatiest spider I've ever seen padded across the road and I almost had to swerve round it. Bats fluttered by and the jungle played it's jungle cacophony at full volume.
Sporadic signs said Salta 61km, and twenty minutes later, 59km. The petrol gauge began sinking through the red and became a taboo subject of conversation. We'd survived thus far without changing a tyre but became mindful of the advice we hadn't heeded: take a spare, two if you can and a spare tank of gas. All we had was 8 litres of agua and some warm white wine.
Trucks fly round tight bends with lights full beam and the unlit road seems to stretch on forever. Once we rounded a bend after a truck, flipped the lights back up to full and out of nowhere appeared a head of 25 horned cows. Quite the surprise.
The sweet sweet streetlights of Salta eventually envelope us and after what I'd driven through I took us back through the mental traffic of Salta without a hitch. Apart from a long drive down a one way road. We made it back in one piece with an unscathed, albeit very dirty cowboy. Good work fella.
Knacked and pretty much overwhelmed with the natural beauty of the Salta region, I fell into a deep and contented sleep, in Granny Formia's flowery bed.
Barns
No comments:
Post a Comment